Stichting Russian Justice Initiative/Legal Assistance Astrea

Together with its implementing partner, Pravovaia Initsiativa (Ingushetia), RJI provides free legal counsel to victims of human rights violations and their families. The organization’s lawyers and researchers investigate incidents of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions and bring these cases to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
The organization emerged from a series of small litigation activities begun in 2000 as a response to the problem of impunity in Chechnya. Initially, members and volunteers of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch put victims in contact with experienced European lawyers, who, in turn, prepared applications to the European Court on the victims’ behalf. By mid-2001, as a growing number of victims requested representation, these ad-hoc efforts were no longer sufficient to meet demand.
Thus, in late 2001, a group of human rights activists founded the Chechnya Justice Initiative in the Netherlands, with an office in Moscow, and a local organization in Ingushetia now known as Pravovaia Initsiativa to jointly implement the Chechnya Justice Project. Since that time, the organization has steadily increased the number of victims it represents and in 2007 the organization expanded its activities also to other republics of the North Caucasus. In December 2004, the organization Chechnya Justice Initiative was renamed Russian Justice Initiative.
Today, the Russian Justice Initiative has established itself as one of the leading legal representation and litigation organizations in Russia. As grave human rights abuses continue, and the climate of impunity persists, the work of the organization remains wholly relevant and crucial in its contribution to ending violence and opening the way for lasting peace in the North Caucasus.